She dropped Lux’s hair, and Lux, whimpering, drew her knees up to her chest and gazed at Jim with round, pleading eyes. Her look sent a wave of guilt through him. He didn’t like that. He didn’t want to feel responsible for her—he had nothing to do with her.
Mary noticed their exchanged glances and scowled. “Do you know what you’ve done? What she is?”
“Please,” he said. “Enlighten me.”
“She’s a Vitro, you ass. We all are, really, but we’re not like her. Let me guess,” Mary sighed. “She does whatever you tell her, to the letter. She grovels at your feet.” She crouched beside Lux and pinched her cheek, speaking through pouty lips as if speaking to a puppy or a baby. “She just tries so hard to please her precious master.”
“What?”
Her eyes crackled at him. “She’s a pathetic puppet, like all the others. But you’ve made a mess. Oh, quite a mess. The investor came today, you know, to see her.” She wrapped an arm around Lux and stroked her cheek. “And now there’s no doll to put on display for him—ah! I wish I was there to see it. Strauss must be murderous.”
Jim had no idea what she was talking about. He narrowed his eyes. “What do you want? Who sent you after me?”
She groaned. “I’m bored. You’re awfully boring, did you know that? Jay, Wyatt, just beat him up a bit. That’ll keep him put.”
“You just want to keep me put? That’s it? Well, all you had to do was ask. I’d do anything for a pretty girl like you, Mary.” His voice grew frantic as Jay and Wyatt pulled him to his feet.
Mary rolled her eyes. “I always have to clean up Nicholas’s messes. Didn’t I say the nails were a dumbass idea? Go on. Hit him until he’s unconscious. I want to get back to the Vitro building to see what’s going on. They’re probably stirred up like sharks over blood with Lux going missing.”
“Wait! Let’s just talk about this for a—”
They didn’t wait. One of them—he never saw who— cracked a fist into Jim’s jaw and his vision went spotty. He reeled backward and slammed into the sand, tasting blood in his mouth.
Then he heard a shout of surprise, and though he braced himself for a second blow, none came. He blinked away the black spots in his eyes and gaped.
Lux had sprung up like a cat. She whirled and kicked, catching Jay in the stomach. He doubled over. In an instant, she was on Wyatt. Her movements were clumsy, uncoordinated, but effective. Her hair flared in the wind like a silken cape. A punch, a kick, and a head butt and Wyatt was laid on his back, gasping. Mary’s eyes went wide, and she held up her hands, but Lux swiped her feet out from under her and then pounced like a tiger, her hands around Mary’s throat.
“Lux!” Jim scrambled to her. Her eyes were flat, dead, unseeing, and her grip tightened around Mary’s slender throat. Mary’s eyes grew wide and her cheeks turned a sickening shade of blue. “Lux, stop!” he yelled.
And just like that, she let go.
Mary threw Lux off of her and crawled backward across the sand, choking for air.
“Go,” she whispered to her friends. “She’s a bodyguard model like Clive!”
“What?” Jay winced, his arms still around his middle. “I didn’t know that. But she’s a newborn!”
“Doesn’t matter,” said Mary. “Let’s go.”
The three of them started running up the beach, but Mary paused at the tree line and yelled back, “You won’t leave this island alive, either of you! It’s too late.”
“What are you talking about?” He was still trying to swallow his astonishment at Lux. “If you know where Sophie is—”
“I don’t know where your girlfriend is, but if Corpus has her—” Mary smiled, a thin, cruel smile, “I wouldn’t count on seeing her again.”
SEVENTEEN SOPHIE
Sophie was caught completely off guard. She froze to the spot, speechless, unable to look away from her mother’s eyes. Moira Crue’s face was a thundercloud. “What are you doing here?” she whispered, her lips tight.
“I—your e-mail,” Sophie stammered. “You asked me to come.”
Now it was Moira who looked blindsided. “E-mail? What e-mail? I never sent you an e-mail, Sophie. What is going on? Where’s your father?”
Her stomach twisted. “He’s home. In Boston. He doesn’t know—you e-mailed me! I have it here—Oh.” The copy of the e-mail had been in the pocket of her jeans. She realized, with a shudder of horror, that whoever had hit her on the head must have also undressed her and put her in the gown she now wore. She wrapped her arms around herself, clamping her teeth shut to keep them from chattering. She felt violated, afraid, and suddenly all she wanted was for her mother to put her arms around her and tell her everything was going to be okay.
But Moira didn’t. Instead, she wrapped her fingers around Sophie’s wrist and pulled her down the hallway, walking at a pace that had Sophie jogging to keep up. They were the only ones in the hall but her mother glanced around anxiously, as if expecting someone to jump out at any moment.
“Ouch, Mom, you’re hurting me!”
Moira didn’t loosen her grip. “Stop talking. Do what you were doing before.”
“What?”
Moira stopped and whirled, going nose to nose with Sophie. Her blue eyes bore into Sophie, making the space between her eyes tingle. “It’s not safe here. Keep impersonating Lux. We’ll talk in private. Come on.”
Sophie swallowed and nodded.
Moira took her to a small office tucked at the end of the hallway where Sophie had woken to Andreyev and Strauss. The office was cluttered and worn; she could tell that her mother spent a lot of time here. Filing cabinets were crammed along one wall, and opposite them rose a massive floor-to-ceiling, wall-to-wall bookshelf overflowing with books, binders, and lab equipment. A whiteboard hung on the wall behind the desk, scribbled over with formulas Sophie didn’t understand; the multicolored ink was so old the reds were faded to pinks. Small photographs were taped to the frame of the board—children, all of them. They looked like younger versions of some of the kids she’d seen in the building already. There was a cherubic boy who had to be Clive, and the girl with the brown curls, and Nicholas, his hair short but his eyes holding the same odd expression that was a mingle of boredom and epiphany.
There was something missing, and it took Sophie a moment to realize what it was: there were no photographs of her. Not one. Maybe this is someone else’s office, and not my mom’s. But Moira sat in the chair behind the desk and folded her hands on top of the papers strewn before her with a familiar ease that told Sophie this was indeed her mother’s office, and that for reasons unknown to her, she was not allowed here. Not in photographs, not in the flesh. This room seemed to Sophie to be the heart of Moira’s life, the room that was the center of her world—and Sophie was very obviously not in it.
“Tell me everything,” Moira said. She nodded at a chair in the corner, and Sophie carefully set aside the coffeemaker on it and took a seat.
“You didn’t send me an e-mail telling me there was an emergency and that you needed me?” she asked flatly.
“No.” Moira kept glancing at the door, as if afraid they’d be discovered.
“Well, someone did.” Sophie’s face was growing very warm. That was one question answered, at least. There was no emergency. Her mother had never wanted her here, and that hadn’t changed. “All it said was that you needed me and that I should come, so I did. It was signed by you and sent from your e-mail address.”
Moira leaned back in her chair, regarding Sophie thoughtfully. “Someone on the island, then. They couldn’t access the servers from anywhere else.”
“Mom.”